ANCIENT GREEK ART

• Minoan• Archaic• Classic Golden Age• Hellenistic

TIME PERIODS

Ancient Greek art is mainly in 4 forms:

• Architecture• Sculpture• Painting• painted pottery

ANCIENT GREEK ART

POTTERY

Pottery from all periods of Greek history

Exekias black-figure vase from Athens

TYPES OF POTTERY

PROTOGEOMETRIC

GEOMETRIC

ORIENTALIZING

BLACK FIGURE

RED FIGURE

WHITE GROUND

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhPW50r07L8

Sculpture includes small figurines and life-size statues, but also relief sculptures which were on the sides of buildings, and also tombstones. We have very little Greek painting from the Classical period; most of what we have is from the Bronze Age.

SCULPTURE

The paintings were painted on walls, as decoration for rooms, like murals or wallpaper. On the other hand, we have a good deal of painted pottery.

THE PAINTINGS

Greek culture began with the Minoans who lived on the island of Crete south of mainland Greece. There art was based on beauty and having fun! They are named after the mythical kind Minos who ruled Crete and owed a half –man, half-bull “pet” called the minotaur and he was also his step-son. His wife had a married a bull before him!! Minos kept him in a labyrinth and sacrificed young Athenian men and women to him until the mythical Athenian hero Thesus , a famous hero, slew him.

THE MINOANS

The Minoans were peace loving people and there Goddess was a snake –Goddess. They enjoyed bull jumping in which young men and women somersaulted off the backs of wild bulls. The women are whiter because they spend more time indoors, but they were equal as athletes. The wave like shape of the bull and fighter suggests that man and nature were one in Crete. The Minoans after being conquered became Greek.

THE TOREADOR FRESCO 1500 BC

Greek sculptures looked like the Egyptian tomb statues. The artist must have spent time in Egypt.

The Kouros is as symmetrical and rigid as the statue of King Menkaura and his queen and both step forward on the left foot and their hands are held to their sides.

THE ARCHAIC PERIOD

Kouros

His expression and proud posture indicates the respect that sports heroes commanded in Greek society.

THE CHARIOTEER OF DELPHI

GOLDEN AGE SCULPTORS

Polykleitos is at easy and is tense at the

same time.Myron

Phidias was the greatest sculptor of the Greece’s

golden age

Greek architectural style are very popular. The Romans imitated them for centuries, Europeans imitated them from the Renaissance. 19th Century Americans recycled Greek styles in home building in a movement called the Greek Revival. The Greeks invited three architectural formulas. Each one depends on a specific mathematical relationship.

GREEK ARCHITECTURE

GREEK COLUMNS

THE OLYMPIAN GODS

It was build under Pericles and supervised by Phidias the two most famous sculptors and architects of their time in 447 BC. It is 8 columns wide and 17 columns long. The Doric columns lean towards the center.

PARTHENON

PHIDIAS 480 – 530 BCE

He was one of the most well-known of the Greek sculptors and architects.

He designed the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the “Elgin Marbles”

ELGIN MARBLES

LORD ELGIN (THOMAS BRUCE)

Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin was a Scottish Nobleman and the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

In 1803, he removed about half of the sculptures from the Parthenon and moved them to England, where they still are on display in the British Museum.

The Greek government wants them returned. They suffered from neglect during the Ottomans and further destruction (the ones that are still in Greece) under modern Greece.

What do you think? Should they stay in London or be sent back to Athens?Do they belong to Greece or the world?

The Parthenon’s main function was to provide shelter for the monumental chryselephantine (made of gold and ivory) statue of Athena that was created by Pheidias and dedicated in 438 BCE. The statue stood approximately 9 or 11 meters (around 40 ft.) tall. It has not survived to our day, but we have enough accounts of its existence along with a number of smaller marble copies, including the one on exhibit at the National Museum of Athens.

THE STATUE OF ATHENA

This shows the use of Ionic columns in ancient Greek architecture`

THE TEMPLE OF ATHENA NIKE

CARYATIDS

These were statues of women that formed the columns on the porch of the Erechtheion in the Acropolis.

When Alexander the Great died, the Hellenistic time period began (323 BCE).Hellenistic sculptors show for the first time the suffering of human beings. The Hellenistic period ended with the last conquest of the Greek kingdom by Rome in 31 BCE.

HELLENISM

THE HELLENISTIC AGE

It shows victory and looks like she has just landed. It radiates energy. it was suggested that the Victory was

erected by the Macedonian general Demetrius I after his naval victory at Cyprus between 295 and 289 BC.

THE NIKE OF SAMOTHRACE

It could have been carved by three sculptors from the Greek Island of Rhodes. It captures the struggle between a father, his boys and two vicious sea serpents. Laocoon was being punished by the Goddess Athena.

LAOCOON AND HIS SONS

ALEXANDER FIGHTING THE PERSIAN KING DARIUS III